Wednesday Winners (and Losers)

A weekly roundup of good deeds, missteps, heroic feats and epic failures in Tri-State transportation news.

Winners

Suffolk County Legislature – All 16 (of 18 total) legislators present at Tuesday’s full legislature meeting voted in favor of adopting Long Island’s first county-wide Complete Streets policy. Thanks to the leadership of Legislators Rob Calarco and Kara Hahn, the bill’s co-sponsors, all roadways will be required to consider the safe accommodation of bicyclists, pedestrians, transit users and motorists alike.

New Britain cycling advocates– The New Britain (Conn.) Bike Connectivity Work Group—a group of cyclists, advocates and municipal officials—have compiled recommendations for a comprehensive bicycle network for the city. Their report lists context-sensitive bicycle accommodations that take into account factors like street width, traffic volume, and nearby land uses. New Britain is ripe for these changes; cycling continues to grow in popularity, and as the advocates acknowledge, with CTfastrak expected to come online in 2014, it will be imperative to ensure safe cycling access to downtown stations.

Losers

Late night PATH riders – PATH service continues to shut down each night at 10 p.m., and there’s still no word on when late night service will return. Fed up with the situation, commuters from Hoboken and Jersey City have taken to Twitter, Facebook and Change.org to protest.

NJTransit – A few months before Superstorm Sandy brought severe damage to about a quarter of all the agency’s commuter locomotives and railcars, NJTransit instructed consultants not to analyze any impacts climate change could have on rolling stock. If any potential threats were coming, they would simply move the trains out of the way. The agency must account for that costly decision at federal and state Sandy-related hearings in Washington and Trenton in the coming months.